


Trades Sung In Tongues

by icarus_chained



Category: Moulin Rouge! (2001)
Genre: Deus Ex Machina, Fix-It, Gen, Magic, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 18:25:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love has its costs. So does magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trades Sung In Tongues

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt of "Oh wait, I'm a wizard", on the theme of Deus Ex Machina. Small fix-it.

Life was a series of trades. Music, beauty, truth, freedom, love. They all had their costs, demanded their payments, time and again. Even freedom, in the end, wasn't free.

Nor life.

Magic had its costs, too. Its trades. Magic, for its use, burrowed inside you. Holes, in your mind, in your memory. Eventually, unchecked, unbalanced, in your brain. Magic felled you, over time. Struck at you without warning. Totally fine one moment, unconscious the next. Holes in the head. That was her price, harlot that she was.

Love, though. Loved holed the heart. Struck at you without warning, yes, the same, but not with sleep. Not with absence. Not with even the slow, seeping losses of her sister magic. Love hollowed you in one blow, carved you out, and left you empty. Love holed you through, and left you bleeding.

He watched. Watched her fall, the courtesan, the woman, the sparkling diamond. Not as he fell. She, she would not be getting up. He watched, as the boy fell beside her. Holed. Hollowed. A blow to the heart, unsupportable. He watched that.

Trades. Always trades. Money for sex, trust for love, hope for freedom. Costs. Holes in the head, holes in the heart.

_Nothing funny. I just like talent._

_The greatest thing you'll ever learn ..._

He stood in the wings, stood on the stage. Listening to the roar of the audience (truth, beauty, music), watching the death of love beneath the cover of the curtain. He stood, feeling the holes inside his head, the absence waiting to happen. And feeling, behind it, the potential.

Holes in the head ... _for_ holes in the heart.

He smiled. Dark and bearded, standing in the wings. Magic on his lips, the taste of a hollowed heart on his tongue, life springing from his throat. The darkness waiting, from which he might not this time return. Costs. Always costs. Magic, she was the greatest harlot of all.

_Do you believe in love?_

_Above all things._

He stood. And he smiled. And he laughed. As magic burst beneath his tongue, music from his throat, and life, holed, unhollowed, from his heart. As the darkness crashed down like a curtain, and life breathed startled in its wake, cast out on the wings of magic, and of love. 

He fell, and he laughed, as the curtains drew closed around him.

_For freedom. Beauty. Truth. And love._


End file.
